What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? (excerpt)

By Frederick Douglass, 5 July 1852

Why: To illustrate the full shame of slavery, Douglass delivered a speech that
took aim at the pieties of the nation -- the cherished memories of its
revolution, its principles of liberty, and its moral and religious
foundation. The Fourth of July, a day celebrating freedom, was used by
Douglass to remind his audience of liberty's unfinished business.

Full Speech: http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu/doug_a10.htm

Where the text can be found in print: The speech was originally published
as a pamphlet. It can be located in James M. Gregory's, "Frederick
Douglass, the Orator" (New York, 1893), 103-06.

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultous joy, I hear the mournful
wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day,
rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do
forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow
this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave
to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their
wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most
scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the
world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see,
this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's point of view.
Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs
mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character
and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of
July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the
professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally
hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present,
and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God
and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name
of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered,
in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and
trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the
emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the
great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not
excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one
word shall escape me that any man, whose judgement is not blinded by
prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be
fight and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this
circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a
favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and
denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would
be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is
nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have
me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need
light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is
conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves
acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They
acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave.
There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed
by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the
punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a
white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement
that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood
of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute
books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and
penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can
point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I
may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your
streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when
the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to
distinguish the slave from a brute, their will I argue with you that the
slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the negro
race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and
reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses,
constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron,
copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and
cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us
lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and
teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common
to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the
Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving,
acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and
children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God,
and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are
called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the
rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue
the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to
be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with
great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of
justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence
of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have
a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively,
negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself
ridiculous, and lo offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a
man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong
for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of
their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their
relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their
flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with
dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out
their teeth, to bum their flesh, to starve them into obedience and
submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with
blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better
employments for my time and strength, than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that
God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There
is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who
can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time
for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.
O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day,
pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering
sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire;
it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the
whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be
quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of
the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed;
and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that
reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice
and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration
is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national
greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and
heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your
shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns,
your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and
solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and
hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation
of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more
shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this
very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies
and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out
every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side
of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that,
for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a
rival.

Copyright (c) 1997 Douglass Project. All rights reserved.

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